Wednesday, March 11, 2015

If you’ve been following the blogs recently, you’ll have
learned from Matt how we use spots to ID the copious amounts of hyenas that we
keep track of. You also learned about some of our other methods from Ashlei
when the spots just aren’t good enough to make an ID (collars, scars, ear
damage etc…) But, as you might expect, new-born cubs don’t pop out of the womb
with a name, distinguishing features and a great picture that we can use to
identify them!

Cubs are born at a natal den, where we usually aren’t able
to observe them because they spend their time in the den until they're old enough
to move to a communal den with the rest of the cubs. They are born all black, so
telling one new born cub apart from another without any context can sometimes
be impossible.

Boomerang's cubs "Walk the Plank" and "Why is theRum Gone" at 3 weeks old

Once they’re two-three weeks old, their mother will bring
them to the communal den where they’ll remain until they graduate from den life
10 months to a year later. At two to three weeks, the little black cubs still
look pretty similar. They start to develop white rings around their eyes, and
white eyebrows, but unless they happened to get a scar from playing a little
bit too rough with their littermate, they’re still often referred to as “little
black cub,” for lack of distinguishing features.

Hawk's cub "Sports Illustrated" developing white eyebrows

At this point, as far as identification goes, we have two
goals. Our first objective is to find features to distinguish one cub from
another. When we do this, we’re able to give them a cub name, which can be just
about anything, and helps us to keep track of the young cubs if there are
several of them.

Our second objective, although they don’t always happen in
this order, is to figure out who the mother is. With a known mother, we can give
the cub a permanent name pertaining to their lineage. A lineage, as Heidi
discussed in one of her older blogs, is a theme given to a mother when she has
her first litter. All of her cubs will be given a name pertaining to this
theme, which makes it easy for us to keep track of who’s related to whom.

Eremet's cub Puff, formerly C-dot, before Eremwas known as the mother

Typically, finding distinguishing features on a cub and
figuring out who its mother is happen relatively early on and close together.
Even without any scarring, cubs will start developing shoulder spots at a few
months old, which will help tremendously in telling them apart. As for figuring
out who the mother is, the cubs have to nurse from her at some point! Every once in a
while, though, we have a case where this doesn’t work out so smoothly. Meet
Chubs, one of our cubs in the Serena North Clan:

Chubs

Chubs is
almost 4 and a half months old. He has beautiful spots, a nice orange mohawk,
and we have no trouble distinguishing from other cubs. As his name would
suggest, he also happens to be quite plump and healthy, and shows no signs that
he’s malnourished. Somehow, we’ve still yet to figure out who the mother is. She
must be around, because somebody is clearly nursing him, but she never seems to
come around the den while we’re there (which is for a considerable amount of
time every day). At least he has a cute cub name; to remain Chubs for the rest
of his life wouldn’t be so bad!

Help Support the Research

You can help support our research by making a donation to the Hyena Research Fund at MSU. Your contributions provide necessary resources for the students and scientists to continue our work. Use the link below to make a donation or contact MSU for additional details.